Thank You Mark Overmeyer

Mark Overmeyer recently did a blog tour for his book What Student Writing Teaches Us that is available for review on-line on the Stenhouse site. I really enjoyed the sections that I read on-line and cannot wait to get a hard copy since I do not like to read full texts on-line.

On his blog tour I asked questions at most of the stops, and Mark provided thorough, in depth and helpful questions. I will be referring back to his responses frequently.

Here's a recap of the tour:
1) The first stop at Creative Literacy has an interview with Mark as well as answers to questions from two readers about daily oral language and on-line writing scoring.

2) Next Mark stopped over at The Reading Zone and answered a question about managing writing assessments with a large number of students in middle school, and my question about improving students' conventions without taking away from other areas in writing.

3) At Teaching that Sticks he answered four questions about a variety of topics, and gave me a lot of helpful advice for a question that I had about planning for my writing block over the summer.

4) He concluded the tour at Two Writing Teachers. They explained that he wrote both of his books in 15-30 minute chunks of time over many months. I was encouraged by this comment and can see how writing his books not only provide us the benefit of having a glimpse into his knowledge, but I would imagine it also positively impacted him being a reflective teacher.

He also answered my question about grading. Coincidentally my director, partner teacher, and I had just been discussing grading as we build our middle school program. I had forgotten that I submitted the question. His response gave me important thoughts to consider not only for grading in writing, but for all of my classes. It came at a perfect time and I forwarded his comments onto our team so that we can discuss them together.

I appreciate how Mark gave so many insights along the tour and look forward to reading What Student Writing Teaches Us in its entirety.